Ink & Lion Café: coffee culture in Bangkok

In December 2013, Ink & Lion Café opened their doors in the neighbourhood of Ekkamai soi 2, Sukhumvit Road. The whole neighbourhood of Ekkamai has during the recent years seen a turnover of this neighbourhood, like new cool vintage stores, both furnitures and fashion, cafés and coffee roasters

and we have since last year a great art gallery as well named, Toot Yung Gallery. The people behind Ink & Lion Café, are the couple: Adithep Pinijpinyo (Kiak) and Nongphan Tangtaweekul (Pui).

They are both from Bangkok area, Pui from Sukhumvit/ On Nut and Kiak from Thon Buri. Pui studied Interior Architecture and received a master’s degree in Bangkok, Kiak studied Graphical Design in Bangkok and went on studying in San Francisco where he received a master’s degree in Animation and that’s also where they met.

The café culture in San Francisco was great and their interest started to grow and inspire them over there. After a few years of working in San Francisco, in 2012 they decided to turn back to Bangkok and neither of them didn’t really want to work in the field that they had received their degree in, having to go to a regular work 9-6, didn’t interest them. Instead they wanted to build their own business, they searched for a location and found it in Ekkamai, the building was already there so they only had to renovate it to their taste, the interior is lovely, brick walls, cement floors, metal structure and a lot of simple and beautiful second-hand furnitures, I love their really great school benches from Japan!

They are not coffee roasters themselves, but here in Bangkok now, you have such a growing interest in this business, so you can find easily many good ones like, Pacamara, who also makes Ink & Lion’s houseblend, Chapter 01, The Four Mountain, with coffee beans from Ethiopia, Brasil, Indonesia and Thailand. You also have coffee roasters like Ceresia, Roots, Brave coffee Roaster, Philcoffee etc…..

At Ink & Lion Café, you will get excellent, espresso, cappuccino, drip coffee, french press, aeropress and even a fabulous selection of tea as well from Mali Ateli, Khun Mali is a friend of Khun Kiak and Khun Pui, she’s Bangkok-based and she gives workshop in tea composition and will soon start workshops at Ink & Lion café. I like to sit there with my cappuccino and a cake from their selection, my favourite is coconut cake. They order from a bakery called, Size S Coffee & Bakery, Absolutely Fabulous! You can bring your laptop and work here peacefully in the week, the weekends are so crowdy that you can instead of work just have your coffee and enjoy the scenery, watch people…. which is really one of my favourite occupations, something you probably get from sitting at the terraces in Paris sipping coffee watching people go by….

At last but not least, where comes the name from? I wasn’t entirely wrong when I associated the Ink with their creative background, they like writing and drawing, Ink is black and liquid so a very nice association to coffee. Just Ink was too short…. so the Lion, well the espresso machine is a La Marzocco, hand-made from Florence in Italy and “il Marzocco” (the heraldic lion of Florence) was adopted and the crest “a seated lion with the crest of the Florentine Lily”, the synonym of victory and conquest, became the La Marzocco company’s logo.

And there for the name of the café!

Their opening hours:

Week days 09.00-18.00 and Weekends 10.00-19.00 Closed on Wednesdays.

When you’re in Ekkamai next time, do stop by for a coffee and cake and some great conversation with Kiak and Pui, lovely people!